The bulk update request #11445 is pending approval.

change category forgery_(artwork) (2) -> meta

Reason: Both of the posts in this tag were previously tagged as forgery, which was too ambiguous as these are actual forged artworks, while other posts in the forgery tag depicted the act of forgery. A separate tag was needed.

I wonder if forged_signature would be better. "Forgery" on its own makes me think the whole thing is fake, but in the case of those examples, the artwork is totally legitimate, it's just been misappropriated by someone signing it with the incorrect artist.

watsit said:
I wonder if forged_signature would be better. "Forgery" on its own makes me think the whole thing is fake, but in the case of those examples, the artwork is totally legitimate, it's just been misappropriated by someone signing it with the incorrect artist.

You mean you don't think the artwork was done by the forger? Someone just stole two unrelated pictures of dogs and then defaced them with... that?

...that possibility didn't even cross my mind because that's just fucking depressing. If it was created for the purpose of being a forgery, that would be one thing, but...

lendrimujina said:
You mean you don't think the artwork was done by the forger? Someone just stole two unrelated pictures of dogs and then defaced them with... that?

What do you mean by forgery? Saying the image itself is a forgery would be saying it's not a real drawing, that it was somehow faked and passed off as artwork of a dog (tracing over real photos, I guess?). It being a legitimate drawing of a dog, but someone signing it as a person that didn't create it (be it the person themself, or someone trying to credit them for something they didn't make) makes more sense to me. If it's the former, I'm not sure such "artwork" should stay as it would basically just be a trace, while the latter I could see having leeway to stay if it's good enough even if the true artist is unknown.

watsit said:
What do you mean by forgery? Saying the image itself is a forgery would be saying it's not a real drawing, that it was somehow faked and passed off as artwork of a dog (tracing over real photos, I guess?). It being a legitimate drawing of a dog, but someone signing it as a person that didn't create it (be it the person themself, or someone trying to credit them for something they didn't make) makes more sense to me. If it's the former, I'm not sure such "artwork" should stay as it would basically just be a trace, while the latter I could see having leeway to stay if it's good enough even if the true artist is unknown.

That's not how 'forgery' is used in art. Lots of art forgery involves making a real painting and passing it off as the work of someone else. The forged painting may be a duplicate of an original or something made in the style of a famous artist that the forger is passing off as a previously undiscovered work.

Here, I'm guessing the signature was added as a meme/joke/to piss people off.

regsmutt said:
That's not how 'forgery' is used in art.

It is, but I suppose not exclusively. Creating a copy of someone else's art by hand and passing it off as either the original or a legitimate copy I guess would also be considered a forgery. Though those wouldn't be something allowed to stay here either I don't think, so a tag for it wouldn't be necessary. A kind of "forgery" where it is a legitimately created new piece of art, but attributed to/signed as someone who didn't actually make it, I think would be the only kind that would need a tag.

regsmutt said:
Here, I'm guessing the signature was added as a meme/joke/to piss people off.

Or maybe someone contemporary trying to give that certain someone credit for a skill they didn't have (to that degree, or didn't have time to produce), to bolster their standing among the public.

regsmutt said:
Here, I'm guessing the signature was added as a meme/joke/to piss people off.

It was added to artificially inflate its resale value. There's been a considerable market for artwork by that guy since the day the war ended; it's not a good thing, but as you can see from the amount of comments on those posts, that kind of historical baggage gets people talking. There are a lot of fakes falsely attributed to him.

Funny thing, though; a lot of the fakes are too good to have been done by him. He was rejected from art school for a reason. Genuine works by him are considered extraordinarily mediocre by the art world; if it weren't for his signature, it would be worthless to any sort of art collector.

lendrimujina said:
It was added to artificially inflate its resale value. There's been a considerable market for artwork by that guy since the day the war ended; it's not a good thing, but as you can see from the amount of comments on those posts, that kind of historical baggage gets people talking. There are a lot of fakes falsely attributed to him.

Funny thing, though; a lot of the fakes are too good to have been done by him. He was rejected from art school for a reason. Genuine works by him are considered extraordinarily mediocre by the art world; if it weren't for his signature, it would be worthless to any sort of art collector.

At least one of the signatures has some odd artifacting around that makes me think photoshop.

In either case, ultimately I'm not really keen on calling the artwork itself a forgery if it's solely because of a forged signature while the art itself looks plenty legit. Imagine making some beautiful landscape paintings from your own skills and hard training, and finding copies of your art labeled "forgeries" because someone thought to be a funny guy and added Bob Ross's signature in the corner. The signature for sure would be forged, but it feels pretty demeaning to me to call the art itself a forgery when real effort was put into making something personal and unique, and it's only the small scribble in the corner that you had no hand in adding that sullies it.

The false signature is what defines art forgery.

nin10dope said:
The false signature is what defines art forgery.

Art forgery is the creation and sale of works of art which are intentionally falsely credited to other, usually more famous artists.

Not just a false signature. Creating and selling with intentionally false credits. Works of art created and sold honestly, just with a false signature added by a third-party in publicly available copies, doesn't rise to "art forgery".

A false signature is a forgery. If that forgery is attached to a piece of art, then it is art_forgery
The intention to sell based on that forgery for financial gain is the legal offense.
We're not the government so we don't need that arbitration.

Sold honestly, just with a false signature

Bruh...

nin10dope said:
The intention to sell based on that forgery for financial gain is the legal offense.
We're not the government so we don't need that arbitration.

And we don't need to get into the weeds for the intent and purpose of a forged signature on art that may get posted here. I don't see a need to restrict the tag to such cases when it could be more useful in a broader context of misappropriated art via a forged signature.

nin10dope said:
Bruh...

Are you trying to misquote and misunderstand what I said?

watsit said:
And we don't need to get into the weeds for the intent and purpose of a forged signature on art that may get posted here. I don't see a need to restrict the tag to such cases when it could be more useful in a broader context of misappropriated art via a forged signature.

Are you trying to misquote and misunderstand what I said?

Then explain it better. You're the only one getting into the weeds trying to deny that a forged signature on art is art_forgery

nin10dope said:
Then explain it better. You're the only one getting into the weeds trying to deny that a forged signature on art is art_forgery

I suspect what is trying to be said is that a physical art piece that, in its physical form, has only had correct credit attached to it having a signature digitally added to a digital copy of it (without changing the attribution of the physical original) isn't a forgery. That might be a bit hard to follow, so in a hypothetical example- someone photoshops a Hitler signature onto a Richard Scarry drawing for funzies. They are not selling it as an authentic Hitler drawing or otherwise claiming that it is. The original drawing, with a correct signature, still exists somewhere.

I'm inclined to agree here, more-or-less. I do not know if this applies to the two images in the forgery tag though. I cannot find originals of either piece- searches turn up either sites claiming them to be Hitler's art or unrelated similar-looking dog sketches by an assortment of artists. One of them has funky artifacts on the signature. I don't know where the claim of forgery comes from so I can't verify that either.

nin10dope said:
Then explain it better. You're the only one getting into the weeds trying to deny that a forged signature on art is art_forgery

I'm not sure how to clarify "Works of art created and sold honestly, just with a false signature added by a third-party in publicly available copies". To explain the difference with "Sold honestly, just with a false signature", it's pretty simple. The latter indicates artwork being sold honestly with the false signature, which makes no sense (it can't be intentionally sold with dishonest attribution while being honest), while the former indicates art being created and sold without any false attribution/signature, while publicly available copies (those that would end up here) were somehow given a false signature by a third-party (someone with no connection to the original artist or their sale of the art).

And I already explained above why I think instances of the former would feel pretty demeaning to have the art itself be labeled "forgery", because of the actions of a third party that had no connection to the creation of the art. A forged_signature tag would be both less condescending when the art itself was created with honest intentions and only defaced by a third-party after the fact, and also not be restricted to "creation and sale of works of art which are intentionally falsely credited" while still being applicable to such art. It's a more useful classification for the kinds of affected artworks that would be allowed here, IMO.

Alright so I did the thing nobody here thought to do and checked the linked source.
I think this is as close as we'll get to a source saying that these are forgeries in the 'forged signature to inflate value' sense.

regsmutt said:
Alright so I did the thing nobody here thought to do and checked the linked source.
I think this is as close as we'll get to a source saying that these are forgeries in the 'forged signature to inflate value' sense.

FWIW, I'm not disputing anything about those images in particular, but the proposed forged_(artwork) tag more generally. Even if those images would be classified as forgeries, I think making a tag focused on that aspect alone is too restrictive since there can be instances where the intention and purpose is less clear or unknown, aside from simply knowing it wasn't created by the person whose signature is on it, and where a forged signature could be added onto art by a third party that wasn't created for the purpose of passing it off as someone else's work.

watsit said:
FWIW, I'm not disputing anything about those images in particular, but the proposed forged_(artwork) tag more generally. Even if those images would be classified as forgeries, I think making a tag focused on that aspect alone is too restrictive since there can be instances where the intention and purpose is less clear or unknown, aside from simply knowing it wasn't created by the person whose signature is on it, and where a forged signature could be added onto art by a third party that wasn't created for the purpose of passing it off as someone else's work.

I disagree. If there's an image that gets commonly attributed to Picasso, but it's a known forgery, it's worth marking. I've also seen a non-zero number of images that are forged artwork of furry artists- though when it's to sell (as opposed to intended to smear the artist) it's usually fursuits. It's also useful for people looking for unattributed art who might go "Oh, this looks just like so-and-so's work" and add an incorrect tag to a forged piece.

Imo, after thinking a bit, I think that this should go in the artist category to make it more obvious when it's been added. I also think that there's potentially some debate over if the site should host (non-historic) forged artwork at all since proving ownership/un-ownership can be a can of worms and since it's sometimes used as a way to attack an artist's reputation.

A forged signature on a piece of art (without any disclaimer) makes that individual piece of art a forgery, because the signature is universally known as the "This person made this". If you want the piece to not be labelled as a forgery you need to find the original without the forgery.

regsmutt said:
Alright so I did the thing nobody here thought to do and checked the linked source.
I think this is as close as we'll get to a source saying that these are forgeries in the 'forged signature to inflate value' sense.

I did that as well, I just didn't think to bring it up. In hindsight I probably should have.

If I'm understanding it correctly, there's no data where the images actually came from or who actually did them; all we know for sure is that they were found with the signature already there. Whether they were initially created with the intent of selling them as a forgery, versus their being created earnestly but later vandalized with the signature later for financial gain, is unknown and unprovable either way.

lendrimujina said:
I did that as well, I just didn't think to bring it up. In hindsight I probably should have.

If I'm understanding it correctly, there's no data where the images actually came from or who actually did them; all we know for sure is that they were found with the signature already there. Whether they were initially created with the intent of selling them as a forgery, versus their being created earnestly but later vandalized with the signature later for financial gain, is unknown and unprovable either way.

I honestly don't think it matters which of the two theories are correct, that only shifts the blame of the forgery, not the reality of it being one.

nin10dope said:
I honestly don't think it matters which of the two theories are correct, that only shifts the blame of the forgery, not the reality of it being one.

Truth be told, I'm... not entirely sure what point we're even arguing about. Like, what information is even in dispute here?

Progression of events:
1. The dogs were claimed to have been drawn by Evil Moustache.
2. The e6 userbase found the claim plausible enough that the posts were formerly tagged with him as the artist for a long time. Most of the comments on both posts reflect the belief that they were genuine.
3. The post source revealed that they were not, in fact, drawn by Evil Moustache as the signature would suggest, and were part of a large volume of artwork falsely sold as his.
4. The artist tag on both of those posts is now locked due to the confusion.

lendrimujina said:
Truth be told, I'm... not entirely sure what point we're even arguing about. Like, what information is even in dispute here?

Progression of events:
1. The dogs were claimed to have been drawn by Evil Moustache.
2. The e6 userbase found the claim plausible enough that the posts were formerly tagged with him as the artist for a long time. Most of the comments on both posts reflect the belief that they were genuine.
3. The post source revealed that they were not, in fact, drawn by Evil Moustache as the signature would suggest, and were part of a large volume of artwork falsely sold as his.
4. The artist tag on both of those posts is now locked due to the confusion.

I'm saying that forgery_(artwork) is a valid tag to describe these scenarios

lendrimujina said:
Truth be told, I'm... not entirely sure what point we're even arguing about. Like, what information is even in dispute here?

At first, I brought up that calling artwork a "forgery" implied it being fake, when it's likely only the signature was forged, and so suggested making the tag forged_signature rather than forged_(artwork). regsmutt clarified that "forgery" can also apply to real artwork that was created and sold with false attribution for financial gain (what Nin10dope's wikipedia link confirms). Then I said that I feel calling an art piece a forgery could be demeaning in cases where the art itself wasn't created for the purpose of passing off as someone else's work, but when some artist put in their own blood, sweat, and tears into creating their own unique art, and only has someone else's name on it because of an unrelated third party defacing it. Basically implying that the person who actually made the art did so with the intent to defraud others for financial gain, when that couldn't be further from the truth.

There isn't really a question/dispute about the two posts currently with the tag, just whether the tag should be focused on artwork that was created and sold with false attribution for financial gain, or more generally just having the signature of someone who didn't make it regardless of how, when, or why that signature got there.

watsit said:
At first, I brought up that calling artwork a "forgery" implied it being fake, when it's likely only the signature was forged, and so suggested making the tag forged_signature rather than forged_(artwork). regsmutt clarified that "forgery" can also apply to real artwork that was created and sold with false attribution for financial gain (what Nin10dope's wikipedia link confirms). Then I said that I feel calling an art piece a forgery could be demeaning in cases where the art itself wasn't created for the purpose of passing off as someone else's work, but when some artist put in their own blood, sweat, and tears into creating their own unique art, and only has someone else's name on it because of an unrelated third party defacing it. Basically implying that the person who actually made the art did so with the intent to defraud others for financial gain, when that couldn't be further from the truth.

There isn't really a question/dispute about the two posts currently with the tag, just whether the tag should be focused on artwork that was created and sold with false attribution for financial gain, or more generally just having the signature of someone who didn't make it regardless of how, when, or why that signature got there.

Ah, right, right.

At any rate, that's what I was saying is impossible to determine or prove about these. In my opinion, splitting the category would be pointless because, for most forgeries, especially older ones like this... we simply don't know. The only person who could know — the one who wrote that name — almost certainly died decades ago. And considering art forgery is a CRIME, very few forgers are going to be terribly eager to confess which path they took.

Besides. Most of the reason I even suggested this tag is because this is a rare case when TWYS — in this case tagging the artist based on the visible signature — would be inarguably detrimental. Determining intent doesn't contribute towards clearing up any confusion that stems from that and is off-mission for the tagging system as a whole.

lendrimujina said:
The only person who could know — the one who wrote that name — almost certainly died decades ago.

Actually you might be interested to know that determining the validity of signatures is a tried and true profession for a lot of people. It's very reliable to prove a signature is fake or not, they mention it in the wikipedia link

nin10dope said:
Actually you might be interested to know that determining the validity of signatures is a tried and true profession for a lot of people. It's very reliable to prove a signature is fake or not, they mention it in the wikipedia link

That's... not what I'm talking about. We know that the signature is fake.
What we can't prove, what I'm talking about, what Watsit is talking about, is that there's no way to determine if the person who wrote the fake signature is the same person who drew the dogs.

lendrimujina said:
That's... not what I'm talking about. We know that the signature is fake.
What we can't prove, what I'm talking about, what Watsit is talking about, is that there's no way to determine if the person who wrote the fake signature is the same person who drew the dogs.

Oh
Well with this particular defaced image, it effectively does not matter in terms of it being a forgery. The only difference is who's the forger.